Fun with X1D

[MrSmith]

Here's a post-athon from my morning walk at the coast. Whenever I get a new camera I shoot here for a couple hours because I've done it so many times before that I know what the files should/could look like on the same old same old subjects so: sorry if some of you have seem these shots before, taken with previous systems over the years...

so now you can see why i thought it was Rye harbour. it look like the prevailing current is from the same side and the wall is holding the beach back on the right.
this was shot ages ago, on a 5DII or maybe even a mk1 but i think it was a L/R stitch.

 

[JoshMerwin]

Originally Posted by eleanorbrown View Post
Josh, Interesting you should mention this....I just finished (again) reviewing all the offered profiles in Phocus to see if I should stay with Lightroom for my processing or go back to Phocus. I always import Standard into Phocus initially, and really think for Phocus, Standard is the best....has most accurate color in my opinion and in addition, the Phocus Standard is almost a direct match for Lightroom Camera Standard. I have tried to like Phocus, thinking surely it must offer some advantage over LR for X1D files but honestly I keep going back to Lightroom because I'm getting such really good results with RAW conversions and Lightroom has much better shadow and highlight adjustments (for me anyway). Eleanor



On a side note. If you are processing in Phocus, which profile are y'all using? I was using Standard, but thinking I should try something else.


Lloyd C has found roughly what I was slowly discovering which is that LR throws away buckets of headroom at the right hand side of the histogram especially at higher ISO but also at lower.

My new workflow, still evolving, is: import to LR for cataloging and making picks. Then for files that matter, Show In Finder and drop the file on Phocus. Process there with no sharpening or NR but with lens corrections if required. Export as 16 bit TIFF in Prophoto (you have to make your own export preset) and re-import that tiff to LR as your working file.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oops, tried quoting both of you, that clearly didn't work.
My response:

Mine is similar. I use Bridge to make selects and star them or process them in Camera Raw, which does have more headroom than Phocus for shadow and highlight adjustments. Then I can just copy those starred images to another folder to process in Phocus if I want the lens corrections applied and process there into TIFFs. The thing I don;t like about Phocus is having to import the original files to just look at them, it's super annoying. I wouldn't mind it if during that import the lens corrections were applied at that stage. So then we could take those files into any software we want to process.

 

[tashley]

Oops, tried quoting both of you, that clearly didn't work.
My response:

Mine is similar. I use Bridge to make selects and star them or process them in Camera Raw, which does have more headroom than Phocus for shadow and highlight adjustments. Then I can just copy those starred images to another folder to process in Phocus if I want the lens corrections applied and process there into TIFFs. The thing I don;t like about Phocus is having to import the original files to just look at them, it's super annoying. I wouldn't mind it if during that import the lens corrections were applied at that stage. So then we could take those files into any software we want to process.

Yup, Phocus is irritating. It takes FOREVER to import and FOREVENLONGER to export as 16bit TIFF. So I just use LR, which is snappy, and save Phocus for special occasions. You can do lens corrections in LR - for example, +5 distortion and +30 vignetting is about right for the 30mm lens though the sky can remain slightly funky in the corners...

 

[tashley]

Sorry for image overload, can't stop snapping...

 

[hcubell]

My workflow is a little bit different. When I insert a card into my card reader, I open Phocus to import the images and create a new folder in my desired location on an external hard drive, labeled by location and date. I them import those photos as .fff files. I then go into LR and import the .fff files in that new folder I just created. I use LR as my catalog and review my images there. I work on relatively few images from what I shoot. For those images that I decide to work on extensively, I will often try processing the file in both LR and Phocus and see what works best. There are pluses and minuses with both LR and Phocus. The one significant advantage to LR is the way it handles high dynamic range images. The highlight recovery and shadow fill tools in LR are much better. (That was the case with Capture One as well until Version 9, I think, when Phase dramatically improved those tools.) OTOH, Phocus has superb lens corrections for the Hasselblad lenses, and as of now LR has none. Phocus may very well do a better job with higher ISO images. I have not personally tested that. With some images I find the the color and rendering between LR and Phocus to be very similar. With other images, I do see a difference and prefer Phocus. As for sharpening, I never sharpen in my raw converter. I export a 16 bit TIFF and sharpen in PS using Focus Magic with a Radius of 2 and Amount of 100%.

Edit: By using Phocus to do the import from the card, I only import .fff files. I never import 3FR files. If I use LR to import X1D files or I just download to a hard drive, they come in as 3FR files. The problem is that LR reads 3FR files and you can work on them in LR. However, Phocus will not read 3FR files, so you have to import the 3FR files into Phocus and you wind up with both 3FR and .fff files. Unnecessary duplication.

 

[tashley]

Last one for today, B&W conversion.

 

[hcubell]

Sorry for image overload, can't stop snapping...

Thanks, Tim. These latest images are quite effective compositionally, but they also really show off the way the X1D handles color and tone. The images are "colorful" yet they don't scream with excessive contrast and hyper saturation.

 

[tashley]

Thanks, Tim. These latest images are quite effective compositionally, but they also really show off the way the X1D handles color and tone. The images are "colorful" yet they don't scream with excessive contrast and hyper saturation.

Howard, you are unfailingly polite and affirming. I feel like a fraud though! Here's a link to the RAW file for the first image (railway tracks)... you might be surprised/horrified/disappointed!

:bugeyes:

 

[eleanorbrown]

Reason I have been importing in Phocus initially is because I get the fff file which is a good bit smaller than the 3fR file imported directly into into LR from the card. (I then open the fff files in LR.) Is there some advantage one file has over the other in Lightroom?? Thanks, Eleanor

QUOTE=tashley;724227]Yup, Phocus is irritating. It takes FOREVER to import and FOREVENLONGER to export as 16bit TIFF. So I just use LR, which is snappy, and save Phocus for special occasions. You can do lens corrections in LR - for example, +5 distortion and +30 vignetting is about right for the 30mm lens though the sky can remain slightly funky in the corners...[/QUOTE]

 

[rmatthews]

Howard, you are unfailingly polite and affirming. I feel like a fraud though! Here's a link to the RAW file for the first image (railway tracks)... you might be surprised/horrified/disappointed!

:bugeyes:

Thanks for posting the raw. You clearly did a fair bit of work to it
That said, there is so much latitude in the file to play with. I am still a novice in LR but I just saw how effective the dehaze slider can be on the sky in your image so I've learnt something today :thumbup:

 

[tashley]

Thanks for posting the raw. You clearly did a fair bit of work to it
That said, there is so much latitude in the file to play with. I am still a novice in LR but I just saw how effective the dehaze slider can be on the sky in your image so I've learnt something today :thumbup:

I didn't use dehaze actually... the sky has a graduated layer with Contrast +27 and Highlights -100 then the foreground has a graduated layer with Contrast +54, Highlights +100 and Shadows +29. Then there's a brush adding highlights back in to the pitched tin front of the shed roof.

The file as a whole has +60 Contrast, +72 Shadows and +14 Blacks. Clarity is +12 and Vibrance +10.

Also there is +5 lens distortion and +30 vignetting correction, to match roughly what Phocus does.

So just 16 different tweaks.... :ROTFL:

 

[tashley]

Reason I have been importing in Phocus initially is because I get the fff file which is a good bit smaller than the 3fR file imported directly into into LR from the card. (I then open the fff files in LR.) Is there some advantage one file has over the other in Lightroom?? Thanks, Eleanor

QUOTE=tashley;724227]Yup, Phocus is irritating. It takes FOREVER to import and FOREVENLONGER to export as 16bit TIFF. So I just use LR, which is snappy, and save Phocus for special occasions. You can do lens corrections in LR - for example, +5 distortion and +30 vignetting is about right for the 30mm lens though the sky can remain slightly funky in the corners...

My workflow is based on the understanding that LR is my preferred catalogue and that I like to have everything in it - and also that I prefer its adjustments tools greatly to those of Phocus. However, Phocus is better at getting detail from the right hand side of the histogram, especially when there's been ETTR or higher ISO. So I just round-trip to Phocus for those files that might benefit from it. File size? I'm past caring! Colour? Season to taste. These things are so personal....

 

[rmatthews]

I didn't use dehaze actually... the sky has a graduated layer with Contrast +27 and Highlights -100 then the foreground has a graduated layer with Contrast +54, Highlights +100 and Shadows +29. Then there's a brush adding highlights back in to the pitched tin front of the shed roof.

The file as a whole has +60 Contrast, +72 Shadows and +14 Blacks. Clarity is +12 and Vibrance +10.

Also there is +5 lens distortion and +30 vignetting correction, to match roughly what Phocus does.

So just 16 different tweaks.... :ROTFL:

Oh I guessed you wouldn't have used the dehaze filter and would have treated the sky and foreground differently. For me though, layers are still something other people do..

 

[tashley]

Oh I guessed you wouldn't have used the dehaze filter and would have treated the sky and foreground differently. For me though, layers are still something other people do..

I use the word 'Layer' loosely. One of the things I like in LR is that local adjustments aren't actually in layers, they are just local adjustments that you can make and undo at will without needing to keep tabs on a growing series of individually defined and named layers. It's so easy and when you've been doing it for a while, it really just feels like it did in the darkroom. Just dodging and weaving....

 

[pflower]

In theory the 3FR files should be compressed and the 3ffff files uncompressed. However it appears that Hasselblad have not yet implemented the compression on the X1D (nor when I tested it last summer - the H6D). I questioned the size of the files from the H6D-50 and was told that compression would be forthcoming - but clearly not so far.

So you are right - the 3fff files are slightly smaller than the 3FR files whereas the opposite should be the case. On my H3D-39 the 3FR files are about 57-65MB and the 3fff files about 15MB larger. It is curious that with the X1D the (theoretically) compressed version should be larger than the (again theoretically) uncompressed version.

Back in 2011 I had quite an extended conversation about LR's handling of Hasselblad files with a number of people then working for Hasselblad and was told that Hasselblad had provided Adobe with all the relevant details as to the Hasselblad files and that, effectively, both Phocus and LR (then it was LR v3.6) used the same "process engine". Since then I have always used LR and only gone to Phocus for specific problems. Earlier versions of LR had problems with highly saturated 3FR files - particularly reds - and Phocus did a better job. But this was back in the days of LR 3 and LR4 and LR's handling of the H3D files has now improved significantly in that respect. I also spent quite a long time looking at the potential differences between 3FR and 3fff files from my H3D-39 in Lightroom. In the end I gave up and decided I couldn't detect any difference at all. I suppose in theory the 3fff file being uncompressed might have an advantage but my eyes certainly couldn't detect it.

There is certainly no point in keeping both files. I have always just kept the 3FR files and only import the odd file into Phocus - usually just to check from time to time whether I can perceive any real difference between the two programs. Like you I find that the treatment of 3FR files in LR to be virtually indistinguishable from processing in Phocus. I also make my own camera profiles with Adobe DNG Profiler and a Colour Checker passport - again there is such a minimal difference between the home made profiles and the profiles provided by LR that this isn't really time well spent.

Reason I have been importing in Phocus initially is because I get the fff file which is a good bit smaller than the 3fR file imported directly into into LR from the card. (I then open the fff files in LR.) Is there some advantage one file has over the other in Lightroom?? Thanks, Eleanor

QUOTE=tashley;724227]Yup, Phocus is irritating. It takes FOREVER to import and FOREVENLONGER to export as 16bit TIFF. So I just use LR, which is snappy, and save Phocus for special occasions. You can do lens corrections in LR - for example, +5 distortion and +30 vignetting is about right for the 30mm lens though the sky can remain slightly funky in the corners...

[/QUOTE]

 

[tashley]

I had a photographer friend who said, "Always leave the red boat in the photo." When I saw this scene, I remembered his advice.

He was so right! Lovely!

 

[tashley]

Since Tim and Josh are in a fowl mood, I'll up the ante with a water fowl couple. And on a day that only a duck could love.

All these gorgeous bird pictures are driving me quackers!

 

[Thorkil]

strangely absurd, a small cut from real life, becomes suddenly a quiet, beautiful still life and that little Hassy helps it become very present and true :thumbup:
thorkil

 

[tashley]

strangely absurd, a small cut from real life, becomes suddenly a quiet, beautiful still life and that little Hassy helps it become very present and true :thumbup:
thorkil

Thank you Thorkil. I thought it rather surreal too, and hinted at that with the processing. A naked lady on fire being carried by an FDNY operative wreathed in carnations and I'd have a Greg Crewdson on my hands....

 

[docmoore]

Thank you Thorkil. I thought it rather surreal too, and hinted at that with the processing. A naked lady on fire being carried by an FDNY operative wreathed in carnations and I'd have a Greg Crewdson on my hands....

Not far from an Eggleston ... real 60's vibe

Bob